So, I'm really a bit of a terrible blogger, and the only reasons I have for this are that my life is reasonably uninteresting to anyone but me and that when I'm off doing something interesting I don't exactly have the time/inclination to blog about it? Or I'm a bit tired afterward and too lazy to blog about it then? Or who knows?
At any rate, recently my life has been all about horrible sleep schedules, lots of reading and writing, and a whole ton of One Direction. To anyone and everyone that claims I have a problem: yeah, you could call it that. I'm not denying it.
I do, however, update my twitter and tumblr a good amount! So there's that to be said of me! Though generally I like to keep my tumblr to myself. Whatever.
Here's a catch up on the Life of Hope via Pictures:
Wore a while back, out to dinner with Lauren, Leslie, and Devin. Shirt: Ann Taylor; pants: American Eagle
Sandals: American Eagle
Ordered online from Thrift Books. Absolutely brilliant website and a completely beautiful book. Also: Duran Duran tour t-shirt, a pajama staple
I don't often wear hoops, so when I do, I feel the need to document it
Tank-top: Forever 21; shorts: Urban Oufitters. Wore out to the drum circle on Treasure Island.
One of the guitar picks of One Direction, gifted to me by my lovely uncle, who happens to work for the security company that supplies the Amphitheater. I can't find it at the moment, which is making me feel mildly sick to my stomach. And no, I do not want to talk about the possibility of it being permanently lost, thanks.
On the extremely comfortable bed I slept in while vacationing in the condo of the gracious Uncle Rick and Aunt Christine. We are exactly as cool in real life as we are on camera.
ME BEIN' MEDITATIVE LOL
The best way to deal with the orthodontist is to wear nice beachy colors and pretend like you're going somewhere lovely
In which I am upset by the prospect of washing my hair and really enjoying my Aerie sports bra
Ballet has been completely fantastic and I'm so incredibly sad to see the end of it and I wish it were more days a week and I love Leslie for buying me that skirt (for other things, also, but still)
One of these fruit flavored snacks is a hammerhead, which makes sense, seeing as to how they are meant to be shaped like sharks. The other is a red blob. I want to know how a red blob got in there. Is that a sea urchin? Is there a kind of shark I do not know about that is spherical? I KNOW IT'S JUST A NORMAL DEFECT I KNOW THESE ARE ONLY STOREBRAND FRUIT SNACKS MY INTERNAL MONOLOGE IS FUNNY DON'T BE A PARTY POOPER
This is me, today, and my reaction to the fact that Melina was watching Pretty Little Liars without headphones while I was trying to write (fanfiction; don't look at me)
And that's it, that's my entire life this summer, minus all of the delightful beach/party photos that have flooded my facebook feed. You're welcome (I'm sorry).
P.S. "Swim Good" is the title of a song by Frank Ocean, and I've been listening to excessive amounts of Frank Ocean recently. You should be, too.
Looking slightly disheveled now, what with having gone to church and on the boat and anywhere else my darling father desired to go today, but here's what I wore:
Shirt: Ann Taylor (Thanks, Grandma!); skirt: American Eagle
Today's theme was buttons. Also: those are actually functional and this shirt is so comfortable. Sigh.
My trusty American Eagle sandals
A SMILE IS THE BEST ACCESSORY YOU GUYS. Also my standard silver studs and child ring, but, you know.
Now, off to shower (again) and change, so I can go to a party instead of taking a nap like the old lady I really am. Example: generally the response from my peers to my Ann Taylor adoration is, "My mom loves that store!" And my grandma loves that store. But that's okay, because my grandma also reads this blog and is an angel, and (as my mom likes to reminder her) I hope to be like her in many ways when I grow older. Might as well get an early start, eh? Oh, and my mom's response to all of my Ann Taylor birthday purchases ($50 or less for two shirts, a skirt, and a clutch)? "I'm making you pick for me next time we go shopping." Anyone else looking to hire me as a personal shopper, hit me up~
So I've been terrible with these and should probably call them "Outfit Posts" instead of "Daily Outfits" or whatever but still, okay, that's the title I've been using and I promise to start wearing real clothes and ugh I don't know, being a responsible blogger and aspiring author by writing more of everything, alright? ALRIGHT? Okay. Here are the only two legitimate outfits I've managed to wear in the past eight eternities, the second of which I wore today:
Earrings: Gifted (Thanks, Papa Jack and Billie Jean)
Sandals: American Eagle
A reminder that I need to learn to french braid my own hair like an adult
Bracelet: Actually my ID bracelet from infancy (Thanks, Mom); ring: Gifted (Thanks again, Mom)
Tank/bustier top/whatever: American Eagle; shorts: American Eagle
And from the back! These shorts are basically the most comfortable in existence and my hair looks rough and I just wanted something cozy to wear to Xtreme Adventures.
Sandals: American Eagle
Earrings: Gifted; ring: Gifted
That first outfit I wore out with Devin to go shopping for our ballet class requirements. Today I went to Xtreme Adventures, which is essentially this giant arcade type place. It has laser tag and a jump zone with a bunch of trampolines and a bumper cars thing. It's a lot of fun, but of course it's expensive like any other arcade; unless your sister works there and gives you free tokens, so long as you don't actually try to cash in your tickets for anything. I paid for some of my own tokens in the hopes of winning an Xbox 360 from that stupid Barber Cut game with the tiny, dull blade on a little arm that's supposed to be able to cut these super-duty strings holding up the empty boxes of expensive electronics. At first I was hoping that the Xbox was actually in there, 'cause then the box would be really heavy and weighing down the string and making it easier to cut down... then I realized that it would be ridiculous to have it still in there, 'cause you don't want to be having expensive electronics falling after strings snap and all of that. Also they probably know what I know, and they don't want people's chances of winning to be greater. Sigh. At any rate, the whole day was a delight, even if I'm ten dollars out because of a stupid arcade game designed to be nearly impossible to win. I'm an optimist.
So, a while back, Joe's birthday present to me came in the mail.
A fact: I love Joe's handwriting a lot
Another fact: I love the covers of each of these books
My pinky is partially blocking the little smiley face that follows "Trust yourself!"
I may have cried a little bit. Okay: I did. I cried a little bit. I'm a very emotional sort of girl. All of the comparisons to victims of demon possession and fictional serial killers? I don't know where people get those from. People who argue that whole, "you're vicious but also totally pretty so don't stress" thing? Weirdos, all of 'em.
Ignoring the slightly tragic state of my manicure (which is of course gone now, since this was taken on the day the book arrived) and focusing on the book itself, you'll notice that A) It's written by Kristin Cashore and B) Kristin Cashore has signed the inside, advising me to "trust myself." What you might NOT realize upon first glance is that A) Kristin Cashore is a perfect angel of YA Literature and a source of inspiration for me personally and B) This message hit me right in the heartstrings, and the reverberations shook the tears right out of me.
"Hope! Shouldn't you trust yourself without needing to be told? Why would that message resonate with you?"
A surprise: I don't always do the things I know I should.
Not a surprise: I finished the book within two days (actually took me rather a long time, really, but I guess I was a bit out of the habit and it was 539 pages long) and it was completely and utterly fabulous.
Recently I had a minor identity crisis that involved me questioning whether I was really meant to be a writer and whether I would ever truly be able to manage anything and if I wasn't a writer then what WAS I, and who was I, and why, if I wasn't meant to write, did I feel so horribly lost and sad when I left off doing it for a long time and why did it hurt me so much to say that I hadn't read anything new in such a long time? Because I am a writer, and I can write something if I just sit down and force myself to take the time and do the work, and I am allowed to do that and be that and anything else I choose, because I have a right to happiness and my own singular truth, and I might not be the most brilliant or capable person but that does not mean I am stupid or incapable, and a whole lot of other things that this book and Kristin Cashore's reminder--whether designed for me personally or signed into every single book handed to her that day, seeing as to how it fits well into the theme of Bitterblue--reminded me of.
That, and the whole story got me thinking in terms of stories and my own and how it differed and how it might be similar and what I wanted to be able to say to people with my writing and how very much I simply wanted a plot that made sense, and how if I wanted that I was going to have to be precise enough and diligent enough to produce an actual map of the world that my characters lived in.
And of course it reminded me that Kristin Cashore had a blog and that I could follow it and read up on any advice or personal experience she had to offer. And it made me incredibly grateful for the gift that her and Joe had given me, and reminded my that however different or similar my mom and I might be that I was grateful also for her anger and her advice and her desperation and sadness and every other thing that makes her my beautiful, ridiculous, adoring and inspirational mother.
Anyway, I should stop writing now before this entire blog post devolves into on long run-on sentence and William Faulker rolls over in his grave in agony over my bastardization of his art form or whatever.
I guess it's not entirely fair that I consistently update my tumblr and neglect this blog for weeks at a time, yeah? Here's a fairly humble apology to everyone that reads this, because you guys amaze and delight me, okay? You're all shining stars and I offer you hugs/handshakes/high fives/cheek kisses/whatever your preference. That sounds mildly sarcastic but it isn't. Pat yourselves on the back.
Visiting Angelica in Orlando for pool times and pasta and car rides and frozen yogurt and long lazy chats
Registering for Ballet I at the Patel Conservatory with Devin. It's a birthday present from my parents and I am so excited, you have no idea. Several people seem surprised by my "sudden" interest in dance but! This interest is not sudden! I have always loved dance and wanted to learn, but when you're above the age of five you suddenly realize that most beginners classes are for people that age and under and dance classes are kind of expensive and what if you're bad at it and oh, man, a whole cornucopia of things.
My fast-approaching birthday (June 3rd, y'all; save the date)
All good things. Sometimes I make lists inside of my head of pleasant things like that, or just anything at all that's at least a tiny bit interesting. You know what's weird? I often feel like I don't know a lot of concrete facts about myself. Not a lot of things I can just spit out in bulleted list format. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, maybe; I doubt there's any interesting person (not that I'm claiming to be interesting) out there who can describe themselves quickly and easily via bullet points. Still: I'm always a bit in awe of people who know their favorite song and their favorite color and their favorite shirt, who have bucket lists, who know their pet peeves and what they normally dream about. I feel like I only ever know a fact for a brief amount of time. For the past few days I've been especially fixated on collecting a bunch. I keep meaning to make a physical list, since keeping track in my head doesn't actually work, what with my memory not being a steel trap or whatever the proper expression is. I think it's mind, not memory, but memory is what we're focused on here so we're allowing me to make minor changes to popular expressions, 'kay? Getting back on track with the whole list theme: I'm about to hit you with some Fun Facts™ about me, Hope:
I cannot stand sleeping next to windows at night. I hate walking into my kitchen, even. No. Bad. Terrible. It just freaks me out. I've no idea why. I can sleep in a room with a window; my bedroom has one. I could handle maybe being in a third floor building with a window. I am fond of windows. I just... I always feel like someone's gonna shoot me or be watching and we're gonna leave this alone now because it's 3AM and we all have our irrational fears, right?
My favorite song is Marching Bands Of Manhattan. I made this claim once and I've stuck to it since. I just really, really love this song, and Death Cab is my favorite band, and I capitalize all of the words in song titles because I'm a lunatic and that's how I like to organize my iTunes. In all caps. In case you were wondering.
I prefer nausea over a cold, probably. I just really despise being unable to breathe properly.
Roller coasters give me migraines.
I really and truly admire virtually every member of my family for some reason or another.
At one point, I really wanted to be a psychiatrist. There are occasions on which I still think this is a good idea.
I, like virtually ever other member of a social networking site, worry that I have a very boring sort of internet voice that strikes people as exceedingly unappealing and therefore will never garner any decent amount of attention and will continually disappoint readers everywhere that don't feel bound by familial loyalty.
I probably am extremely boring and only find myself interesting because I talk to myself on a regular basis and if I didn't think I was the least bit entertaining, I would've cut out my own tongue by now, and word on the street is that's a really unpleasant procedure.
I could go on for days, but I really ought to be getting some shut-eye (I really like that word/phrase (?)), and there are other blog posts to blab about myself in, yeah? Stay hungry and classy and beautiful and all of those other things, folks.
Oh, and here's a few photos to tide you over until I get around to wearing real clothes and going out in actual public again:
The manicure I gave myself today; it took me an actual eternity.
The last outfit I documented in my dorm room. Shirt: Old Navy.
Shorts: Vintage; sandals: American Eagle
Bracelet: Gifted (Thanks, Aunt Christine)
The manicure that I was not so fond of but wore all the way through, anyway (my toes were blue with pink polka dots)
The thing about people is that we think we can solve our problems based on set formulas prescribed by other people. Which is complete crap, because surprise: we're people and not math books and life is really hard and calculus is hard, too, but at least there are sometimes answers in the back and calculators are programmed to do things like long division for you.
An example: I thought that coming home would solve my problems for me. And alright, no, I wasn't convinced; I had that niggling feeling deep down that I wasn't really escaping anything by changing the scenery. I know better by now than to think that traveling seven hours south is going to erase any lingering doubt or feelings of inadequacy. I can't shed self-consciousness like a skin and bury it in the ground like I occasionally (okay, often) want to.
Another example (and this is a general statement based off a number of observations and not an attack on any individual, because I know people get anxious when you start addressing issues that might be considered relevant to their current situations; kind of like how nearly everyone can see themselves in their horoscopes if they look hard enough): the way, after a break-up, so many people think they can set themselves a recovery date. You're sitting there telling yourself that because you don't want to feel miserable, because you're afraid of feeling miserable, that you just won't. You'll throw yourself into your work, into a bunch of different projects, into spending time with your family or driving your car around until you run out of gas or obsessively cleaning your house or whatever the hell comes your way, and you'll be fine in a month.
Which is total and complete bull.
The thing about people is that they have all of these pesky emotions and neuroses and they're messy and unorganized. The thing about people is that they watch a lot of television and read a lot of books and see a lot of advertisements and well-thought-out arguments and they think, "Jesus, I am not together! I am not the same as Character A!" and then they try to shave off all of the bits that won't fit into that mould. And sometimes you just want to stop and scream, "NO!"
All sorts of things develop from people trying to model their lives after these unattainable images of SUPPOSED-TO-BEs. All sorts of really hideously awful things. Eating disorders, suicides, broken windows and ripped up books and burned photographs and really, really awful haircuts. And so far wading through the ocean of societal pressures and THE AMERICAN DREAM!! and wants and wishes that other people have for me in conjunction with the anxieties and issues of the people closest to me has been really bizarre and complicated, and sometimes I just want to sit in my backyard on the trampoline and drink iced coffee or stay up until 5AM talking to my mother, or fold other people's socks while watching Luther, or ride Montu six times in a row until my migraine is so bad that I feel like I'm going to throw up.
So, even though people still sleep with people they shouldn't and throw up their meals when they really need the nutrition and burn themselves on purpose and wear pants that give them serious muffin tops, and even though going home hasn't rid me of my preoccupation with the Fear That I Am Going to Fail at Living Life and Therefore Should Not Risk Trying Anything New blah blah blah mentality that I seem to have developed in the absence of my mom's steamed broccoli (why is she the only person on earth who can cook good broccoli every time?), I feel really pleased with the idea that I can now do those things.
The thing about people, I guess, is that even though we run ourselves into the ground trying to accomplish the impossible, we sometimes get it right, and sometimes it's all just really beautiful.
Probably gonna have to fix the bottoms soon; my advice is to invest in shoes, you guys (ie: DON'T follow my example)
Some gratuitous face time (and some lovely sun in the background, despite it being mad cold today)
Also: the close-up of my nails that I meant to post yesterday but didn't; it took me ages to figure out exactly how I wanted to paint them and ended up settling on this
I like Starbucks, bookstores, online shopping, disposable cameras, nail polish, nail files, socks, shoes, slow songs, dancing, style blogs, fried rice, dresses, sunsets, and swimming. I don't like litter, rudeness, arrogance, violence, cold showers, cold weather, large amounts of raw tomato, or bed times. I'm an ENTP, a Tri Sigma, and an English major at Oglethorpe University. I believe in every day miracles and fairytales.
